This invention is a machine specifically designed for cleaning and washing conventional wheelchairs.
Maintaining wheelchairs clean and sanitary whether by institutions such as hospitals or nursing homes or by individuals at their own residences has been difficult. Machines for washing and sanitizing hospital carts have been available. Typically, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,736,948 by Crosswhite describes a washer and sanitizer for a hospital laundry cart. U.S. Pat. No. 3,096,775 by Clarke, et al. describes an apparatus for washing carts used in hospitals or other institutions for carrying food or medications. U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,625 by Kuhl describes a washing apparatus for similar carts which may be used, for example, in bakeries, hatcheries, meat processing operations, etc. U.S. Pat. No. 3,179,117 by Gibson, et al. describes a machine for washing grocery carts.
The aforementioned prior art patents all show and describe a washing chamber within an enclosure, suitably oriented spray nozzles for applying cleaning and/or sanitizing fluid to the article to be cleaned, tapered or slanted floors for draining to a sump, sources of cleaning and/or sanitizing fluids, pumps, controls and piping or conduits for feeding the fluids into the chamber and applying them through spray nozzles to the article being cleaned, and a ramp for wheeling the cart or the like into the washing chamber. The '948 patent provides a motor-driven rotating washer arm and the '625 patent provides a mechanism for moving the article being cleaned back and forth within the chamber during the washing and rinsing operations.